2

Remarks On The Draft Decree

(3) We expropriate and confiscate in the case of the capitalists, but
not in the case of the rich peasant.

(4) Confiscation to be applied to kulaks who revolt and offer
resistance.

Notes

[1]The question of introducing a tax in kind was raised by Lenin in his
“Theses on the Food Question” written on August 2, 1918 (see present
edition, Vol. 28, pp. 45-47). The draft decree for imposing a tax in kind
on the farmers was first introduced at a meeting of the C.P.C. on September
4. It was discussed again at a meeting of the C.P.C. on September 21. It
was probably during these meetings of the Council that Lenin jotted down
his “Main Provisions of the Decree” and his remarks on the draft. (For
Lenin’s documents connected with the drafting of the decree at this and
other meetings of the Council of People’s Commissarsnotes, calculations,
plan of a speech at the Council meetingsee also Lenin Miscellany X
VIII, pp. 148-50.) The decree in its final form was adopted by the
C.P.C. on October 26, endorsedby the All-Russia Central Executive Committee
on October 30 and published in Izvestia on November 14, 1918. The
extension of foreign military intervention and the civil war prevented this
measure from being implemented.

Lenin’s principles for an income tax in kind drafted in
’1918 were elaborated and embodied in the food tax in the spring of 1921,
which marked the postwar transition to peaceful economic construction on
the basis of the New Economic Policy. The decree on the tax in kind adopted
in October 1918 was mentioned by Lenin in his report on the political work
of the C.C. at the Tenth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), when dealing with the
question of replacing the surplus-appropriation system by a food tax (see
present edition, Vol. 32, p. 187)

[2]Article 12 of the “Basic Law on the Socialisation of the Land’
endorsed by the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets on January 18 (31),
1918, and adopted at the session of the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee on January 27 (February 9) runs as follows: “The distribution of
land among the working people shall be carried out on an equalised labour
basis in such a manner that the subsistence and labour norm adapted in the
given area to the historically established system of land tenure should not
exceed the available manpower on each individual farm and at the same time
should allow the farmer’s family to make a fairly comfortable living.”
Article 17 of the Law says: “The surplus income derived from naturally
fertile superior plots as well as from their more advantageous location for
marketing, shall be placed at the disposal of the Soviet authorities to be
used for public needs” (Decrees of the Soviet Government, Vol. I,
Moscow, 1957, pp. 408-09).